Chapter Twenty-Two
Somewhere between midnight and trouble—or Denver and Atlanta—hurtling down the dusty spine of the interstate in a van that smelled faintly of patchouli and unwashed denim, Eleanor Bell, a.k.a.
Mama Lightning, if the band’s enthusiastic renaming had anything to say about it, was rewriting the set list for Shep Moon’s band.
The boys were still laughing over how she’d cut three of their psychedelic filler tracks, declaring, “You can’t groove if you can’t remember what key you’re in, sweetheart.”
Now they were running through the revised order in harmony, vocals overlapping like kids around a campfire, Shep strumming the guitar while the drummer kept beat with his sticks on the back of the seat.
Eleanor sang along with them, her voice warmed up from days on the road and laced with that smoky edge that had started to feel like her own again.
Her mind was sharp today, and she was taking advantage of the lifted fog, unsure how long it would last.
They’d driven through most of the night, taking turns at the wheel, though she was relegated to copilot, a role she didn’t mind, especially when Megan wasn’t behind the wheel.
Roxy took her job more seriously—riding shotgun with her ears perked, snorting at every bump, and whimpering when someone dared turn on the radio too loud.
They’d stopped at a diner off Route 66 for dinner, where Eleanor insisted they all eat vegetables for once.
Not just Cracker Jacks and Coca-Cola and gas station jerky.
Real food. She made the drummer get the meat loaf with green beans, and Shep grudgingly ordered grilled chicken and sliced tomatoes.
Eleanor had gotten the meat loaf too—only halfway through did she remember she hated meat loaf. Always had. But Roxy didn’t, and that dog polished it off like it was prime rib.
“Mama Lightning,” Eddie, the drummer, called from the back, tapping out a new rhythm. “What do you think of this?”
Eleanor paused, listening. The beat was sharp, a little jagged. Almost like a foal that wanted to gallop but hadn’t found its footing yet.
“Maybe a little lighter on the third,” she suggested, patting her thighs in a similar pattern. “Don’t chase it so hard. Let the song come to you.”
Eddie adjusted, tapping again with a slight swing in the downbeat.
“Yes!” Eleanor clapped her hands in time as he mimicked her sound. “That’s it!”
The rest of the band let out a cheer, and even Roxy gave a bark of approval, her tail thumping against Eleanor’s foot, tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth.
This—this was what had been missing. Not just music. Not just the road. But the sense that her voice still mattered. A purpose. That people were listening. That she wasn’t a widow with a dog and a fading memory.
Here in this van, sandwiched in the middle of where they’d been and where they were going, with a follicularly challenged dog and a band of long-haired boys who thought she was cool as hell—she belonged.
Her eyes drifted shut, the wind funneling through the cracked window to sweep across her face. The road ahead stretched on, long and winding. Atlanta was calling. And this time, she wasn’t following someone else’s path.
She was chasing her own damn music.
Just like that, Eleanor realized she’d slipped into this band of misfits like a spoon into sugar.
She stroked her hand over Roxy’s absurd little tuft of rocker hair—the only hair the dog had, perched on her head like a cotton candy bouffant.
“You’re a mess,” she whispered, smiling, “but you’re my mess. ”
The van was loud and smelly and held together by duct tape and divine intervention, but she felt at home.
Like this was her crew. Her chosen family.
The kids called her Mama Lightning now, and it stuck in a way that didn’t chafe like Mrs., Mom, or Grandma always had.
Titles that belonged to thousands, when she wanted one that belonged to just her.
She had the strangest urge to introduce the band to her actual family.
But the image came too quickly, too clearly.
Leanne standing in the doorway with her mouth in that tight little line, arms folded like she expected bad news.
And Nora, eyes half focused on the middle distance, already thinking about which boy would pick her up for a date, twirling the phone cord around her wrist like the tether holding her social life together.
Who could blame them? Nora had just turned eighteen—at the edge of becoming an adult. The world was cracking open at her feet. Eleanor remembered what that had felt like. The delicious ache of possibility.
Only it had been different for her. She was born in 1900, and when she turned eighteen, it was 1918.
The Great War was just ending. The flu pandemic was just starting.
Women didn’t go to Yale. In her case her options were to chase the music and starve or marry a man who could afford meat twice a week.
She’d skipped the school but found the latter.
But it had required giving up her big musical dreams.
And now? Eleanor stared at the woman in the side mirror, the night wrapping around her like a shawl filled with holes.
The woman who looked back wasn’t the girl she remembered but an old woman.
Lines etched around her eyes where it used to be smooth and supple, making her skin resemble the Grand Canyon more than a level plain.
Hair that seemed brittle, silver rather than silky and blond.
Age spots on her arms and hands where skin used to freckle in the summer.
And her lips, which used to be full and plump, were withered and wilted.
Her cheekbones faded into a softness that betrayed the sharpness of who she’d been.
And yet, there was something fierce still burning beneath the surface.
Maybe that’s why she left home. Because when she looked at Leanne, she saw herself in the years she had lost—a life full of duty. When she looked at Nora, she saw the self she might have been if she’d chosen differently.
And the cruelest trick of all was that she knew those selves were slipping through her fingers.
Her mind was starting to blur at the edges.
Little memory lapses had become longer. Sometimes, she forgot where she was mid-song.
Sometimes, she forgot names. Even her own.
Just yesterday she couldn’t remember how to open a Coca-Cola bottle, until Shep had popped the cap off.
And though she smiled through it—though she laughed and played and traveled and sang—a terror lived in her bones that left her constantly feeling unsettled.
Because what was she, really, without her memories? A puffing body without a soul.
“You okay?” Shep asked, pencil moving in quick scratches across the open page of his beat-up notebook, lyrics forming faster than the miles unspooling beneath their wheels.
The hum of the van, the lull of late-night headlights, and the faint scent of gasoline and road dust wrapped around them like a familiar old song. His tapping hand kept time against his bell-bottoms, knee bouncing to a rhythm only he seemed to hear.
Eleanor sat curled in her seat, Roxy a warm lump of loyalty on her lap, her arms loosely crossed over the dog as if doing so would keep the words on the tip of her tongue at bay.
She watched Shep. Bright-eyed. Handsome as sin and just as dangerous.
What if she told him the truth? That no, she wasn’t okay.
That she was scared. That her memory was beginning to fray like the hem of an old apron.
That sometimes she forgot the key of a song she’d written herself or the name of the diner they’d just left.
That sometimes she said “egg” when she meant “chicken.” That cracks were forming in her mind, spreading quietly.
Then, she thought, why spoil the moment? Why anchor this golden, fleeting ride in the weight of her grief?
So, instead, she nodded toward his notebook and raised an eyebrow. “Are you about to turn me into a love song?”
Shep grinned, slow and cocky, a dimple flashing. “Only if you’ll let me.”
“Dangerous game you’re playing.” She gave him a droll grin and an arched brow that she hoped—despite her years—could still take a man’s breath away.
“This isn’t a game, Ellie,” he said earnestly. “Not to me.”
She let out a breath, slow and cautious. If she exhaled too hard, she might tip the balance, sending everything spilling over the edge. She’d been admired before. Flirted with, courted, loved even, but not like this. Not when she felt like an antique. A relic on tour.
“You better make it original,” she said lightly, brushing her fingers through Roxy’s ridiculous patch of hair.
“If it’s about you, it can’t be anything else.”
She swallowed. There were things she couldn’t say at her age, no matter how free she pretended to be.
“But you hardly know me.” Eleanor turned to the window. Her reflection caught her off guard again—silver hair mussed, wrinkles drawn like a topographical map of her life. She stared out instead, into the dark blur of trees and open road.
“I know enough.” Shep’s voice was lower now, quiet like the hush before a chorus. “I know the way you pretend not to like the attention. And I know how your eyes go soft when you think no one’s watching. Like you’re remembering something worth hurting over.”
“That’s not knowing someone,” she whispered. “That’s a good songwriter filling in blanks.”
He didn’t answer right away. And the seconds ticked by in heavy silence. “I know you think me flirting with you is some kind of joke. That when we hit Atlanta, I’ll wink and disappear.”
She opened her mouth to interrupt, to tell him it was fine, expected even.
“But I genuinely like you, Ellie,” he said before she could. “Not just Mama Lightning, the Dame of Rock and Roll. You. And I’m not afraid of the years between us. Only afraid you won’t let yourself be liked.”
What Shep said might be true.
Maybe it was the adrenaline from fleeing tear gas and baton-wielding cops.
Maybe it was the high that came with writing a song that might actually mean something.
Maybe it was just the hum of the highway and the illusion of freedom that comes from being neither here nor there but somewhere in between.
But Eleanor Bell had lived long enough to know you couldn’t count on maybes.
This would all end one day—tomorrow, next week, or next month.
The songs, the stage, the laughter, the looks.
One day, Shep would wake up, and the melody he’d write for her wouldn’t be sweet or flirtatious—it would be a ballad of what-ifs and nearlys.
A sad song for a woman whose name he’d remember like a ghost note in a forgotten tune.
A name she would have long forgotten in the endless sinkhole of dementia.
Still, she wasn’t ready to burst his bubble. Or her own.
Not yet.
Eleanor smiled, soft and small, letting the sorrow gather behind the lines of her smile.
Without thinking, she reached out, her fingers brushing his cheek with a tenderness that surprised even her, and gave a playful tug at the unruly hair curling above his ear with just the slightest hint of silver starting.
He leaned in to her touch like a boy starved for mothering—or something else. And then he scooted closer, his thigh pressing warm and steady against hers, the heat of his body seeping into her always-cold bones like sunshine through a kitchen window in winter. Definitely something else.
In this quiet vulnerability, she leaned her head onto his shoulder, letting him bear some of the weight she wasn’t ready to voice. When she spoke, it was quiet but sure. “Write me a song I’ll remember.”
Shep smiled. His arm moved in rhythm as he scribbled in his notebook, the scratch of the pencil against paper steady, hypnotic. The van rumbled along the dark stretch of highway, rocking her gently.
And she drifted off.
But it wasn’t a peaceful sleep.
In her dreams, they were all there—Shep, her husband, even the man from so long ago, the one who gave her music before she ever knew what love really was.
They all stood before her like a jury of ghosts, waiting for a final verdict.
Each face was etched with an emotion she couldn’t fix but was responsible for. Longing, expectation, disappointment.
And she—Eleanor Bell, musician, mother, memory in motion—looked them all in the eye and said, “I’m old enough now, I don’t have to choose. Not anymore. I’ve earned the right to live what’s left of my life the way I damn well please.”
And with that, she turned toward the music, toward the light, toward whatever came next.